Read an excerpt from the amazing Ilie Ruby's astonishing novel THE SALT GOD'S DAUGHTER

“This enjoyable read stays true to this objective throughout, bringing unforgettable characters to readers through circumstances that are believable, yet nestled in the cultural traditions and superstitions we sometimes need to guide us through difficult times.”
—The LA Review

“When a blue moon rises, mistakes can be undone, lost children can find their homes, and sea lions can shed their skin… This is a bewitching tale of lives entangled in lushly layered fables of the moon and sea.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Lushly woven with elements of folklore, Ruby’s novel is a captivating inquiry into the generational, wayward bonds of mothers and daughters.”
—Booklist

Ilie Ruby's The Salt God's Daughter came to me through the mail, and because the cover was so gorgeous, and the story seemed so intriguing to me, I put it on my to-be-read-and-reviewed shelf. I began to read a week later. And I couldn't stop. The writing is so evocative, the story so enrapturing,  that I devoured the novel in two days and spent the next week obsessed with it. Finally, I contacted Ilie because I had to meet the person who wrote such a book.

I consider Ilie Ruby  a  wonderful friend. I'm thrilled to have done  a panel with her at the Tucson Book festival, and even more fun, to have interviewed her at one of her many packed appearances in New York City.  She's also the author of the critically-acclaimed The Language of Trees, which was a target Emerging Author's Pick and a First Magazine for Women Reader's Choice.  The Salt God's Daughter is about what it means to be different, how we find our way in the world and manage to survive. It tells the story of Ruthie and her older sister Dolly who grow up under their mother's exotic stories, and the pull of the ocean. Full of folklore and Jewish mysticism, this novel is as original as Ilie herself. Truly, one of my favorite novels of this year, and any year. It's now just out in paperback and trust me, you want it immediately. 

Excerpt from The Salt God’s Daughter by Ilie Ruby

Ruthie, 1972

We ran wild at night, effortless, boundless, under a

blood-red sky—to where and to what we couldn’t have

known. We craved it, that someplace. We were two little girls,

sisters, daughters with no mother, distrustful of the freedom

we were given, knowing she shouldn’t have left. We tore across

dirt campgrounds where we slept, naked but for our mud boots,

letting the wind shiver up across our bare chests. We stole bags

of chips from the canteen on the pier. Our feet pounded the

crushed oyster shells in seaside motel parking lots when we’d

search for drinking water, and we let calluses thicken up our

soles to withstand the hot desert sand, or dash over a highway

of broken glass, wherever we’d been dropped. We scampered

across the foggy cliffs that separated Pacific Coast Highway

from the ocean in old ballet slippers, as nimble as two fairies,

our long red hair whipping into tangles in the wind. We

bumped up against the night, without stopping. We stole wrinkled

leather sneakers that were two sizes too big, and wore

them until they fit. We raced in the sand, fought in the dusk.

We knew we were not invisible. We tightened belts around our

stomachs at night and bicycled unlit sidewalks and sometimes

tucked up our knees and steered with no hands through the

darkness. No one hit us. We believed we were unstoppable. We

slept under sleeping bags, beneath trees, and pushed our backs

against cliffs, our noses cold.

We waited for our mother to come back.

“Ruthie, do you miss her?” Dolly asked.

“No,” I lied.

We talked of Cool Whip and ice cream, of warm apple crisp

and salty Fritos. We dreamed of flying.

Then my mother came back. We’d crawl into our station

wagon at night, trapped by her need for freedom, and then

by her soap opera, General Hospital, which we watched on her

portable television. Afterward, we listened to folk songs and

Hebrew prayers as she’d strum a fat-bellied classical, knowing

this meant that she was feeling fine, that she had acknowledged

she had two little girls, whether she wanted us or not.

We used our fingernails to cut away ticks from our legs, and

we cleaned up her empty bottles before she’d wake up. We bit

at the skin around our nails, leaving it swollen and red.

If I told you that I ached for a different mother, I’d be lying.

I ached for my own, every minute. As motherless daughters do.

She was our child. We didn’t know anything different.

Everyone knew a mother was a daughter’s first love.

When she asked if we thought she was still beautiful, we

said yes, because she was. We told the truth about the steely

lightness of her eyes, how quickly they changed color with her

emotions, from gray to blue, in parts. We lied when she asked

if we thought she’d fall in love one day. We said yes.

It was as possible to miss someone who was right in front

of you as it was to miss someone who had left. It was also

possible to miss someone who had not yet been born. This

I had learned. My mother had told us as much. We walked

around craving everyone, even before they’d leave. We never

thought it would end, our ache. Often, from the windows of

my mother’s speeding green Ford Country Squire, we shouted

out the words to James Taylor ballads and motioned for truckers

to honk on demand by pumping our fists up and down. We

grew cocky, forgetting we were people who had been left.

We were already nomadic, and from the most primal of

places, we had become hunters, always searching for someone

or something we could lay claim to, hook ourselves onto, to

quiet our trembling clamorous souls.

As long as she came back for us.